Compass Point
A Weekly Collection of Data, Articles and Insights from the Commonwealth Educational Policy Institute
A project of the Center for Public Policy
State & Local Education News
Va. education gets new chief academic officer
The Progress Index
July 15, 2016

Superintendent of Public Instruction Steven R. Staples announced Tuesday that Steven M. Constantino will become the Virginia Department of Education’s chief academic officer and assistant superintendent for instruction.
Constantino’s post will begin effective August 15. He has served as superintendent of Williamsburg-James City County Public Schools since 2011.

Richmond School Board adjusts pre-K calendar after state review

Richmond Times Dispatch
July 18, 2016

Richmond’s prekindergarten program will start three days early this school year after a state review found the district’s calendar was short on the number of days students need to be in the classroom.

Classes were set to begin Sept. 9 but will now start Sept. 6.

Andrea Kane, the district’s associate director of academic services, said a review by the Virginia Department of Education found the school district was out of compliance.

The state agency said students need to be in school 180 days rather than 177 days, the number of days Richmond has had in the past.

VDOE awards school innovation planning and implementation grants


The Progress-Index
July 19, 2016

Governor Terry McAuliffe has announced that the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) will award five additional high school innovation planning grants to divisions that have proposed bold programs aimed at providing their students with innovative approaches to learning.


VDOE will award $50,000 each to Bedford County, Hampton, Madison County, Virginia Beach and Williamsburg-James City County.

In addition, four programs that received planning grants in 2015 have been awarded $50,000 grants to support implementation this fall.

One of the programs receiving implementation grants will benefit students in the following school districts: Chesterfield County, Charles City County, Colonial Heights, Dinwiddie County, Goochland County, Hanover County, Henrico County, New Kent County, Powhatan County and Richmond. The program is the Richmond Regional School for Innovation-Code RVA, in partnership with community colleges and Richmond-area employers, will prepare students to graduate with an associate degree, industry certification and guaranteed employment.

Forums offer chance to speak about future of education

Virginia Gazette
July 15, 2016

Last week's Gazette included an announcement about a Virginia Board of Education hearing at Lafayette High School on July 19. The description of topics was very brief and did not include enough information for parents and community members to understand how important their feedback is, especially on the first topic listed: "Graduation requirements and accreditation models."

Some of you might be familiar with the late Sen. John Miller's legislation which recommended, among other things, that the freshman class of 2018 be the first to experience all of their SOL testing and take most of their required courses in their first two years. At the end of this time, they would determine which direction they would like to go: continue with the College Prep courses anticipating attendance at a four-year institution; take as many dual credit courses as possible and, in some instances, begin attending community college; or begin an apprenticeship with a local industry or business. Sen. Miller stressed that students should be able to switch course if he or she found another direction looked preferable (Important there is no 'tracking' involved).

These are some of the many concepts being included in discussions at the state level for a Profile of a Virginia Graduate. Some of the big decisions being made include what knowledge, skills, competencies, and experiences students should attain during their K-12 education to make them "life-ready". Locally, Warhill High School appears to be a step or two ahead in recognizing this is a good opportunity to innovate and try on a smaller scale to pursue some of these ideas with their Pathways Project.

Virginia District Asks U.S. Chief Justice to Block Injunction in Transgender Case
Education Week
July 14, 2016

A Virginia school district has asked U.S. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. to block lower-court rulings requiring the district to permit a transgender student to use the restroom of his gender identity.

The emergency application filed July 13 by the Gloucester County School Board means the recent national debate over restroom access for transgender students has reached the nation's highest court.

The school district asked Roberts to block the mandate of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, in Richmond, Va. The chief justice is the circuit justice overseeing the 4th Circuit, which ruled in favor of a 17-year-old student, Gavin Grimm, who was born female but identifies as male.

The school district also asked Roberts to consider blocking an injunction issued by a federal trial court that requires the district to allow Grimm to use the restroom of his choice. The district says it will file its full appeal—a petition for writ of certiorari—by Aug. 29.

National & Federal Education News

GOP Platform on Higher Education
Inside Higher Ed
July 19, 2016


The Republican Party's platform, which was released on the first day of the GOP convention in Cleveland, included criticism of the Obama administration's handling of sexual discrimination on college campuses as well as calls to decouple accreditation from federal financial aid and to bring the private sector back into the financing of student loans. The document also criticized the dominance of liberalism on college campuses and argued for the encouragement of new systems of learning to compete with traditional, four-year colleges.

The platform decried ideological bias in public higher education, saying state officials should "preserve our public colleges, universities and trade schools as places of learning and the exchange of ideas, not zones of intellectual intolerance or 'safe zones,' as if college students need protection from the free exchange of ideas." It also condemned infringements on free speech and campus-based boycott, divestment and sanction campaigns against Israel.

On Title IX, which is the federal law that prohibits discrimination based on sex in federally funded programs, the Republican document said the White House's alleged "distortion" and micromanagement of the way colleges deal with allegations of abuse "contravenes our country's legal traditions and must be halted before it further muddles this complex issue and prevents the proper authorities from investigating and prosecuting sexual assault effectively with due process."

Clinton talks education in Minneapolis gathering of teachers
InForum
July 18, 2016

Republicans kicked off their national convention in Cleveland this week by attacking Hillary Clinton as entitled and wrong for the country. In a Minnesota visit Monday, the Democratic presidential candidate fired back.

Clinton flew into Minneapolis to speak to the national convention of the American Federation of Teachers, a national labor union. As Republicans in Cleveland were criticizing Clinton on foreign policy, she hit Republican presumptive nominee Donald Trump for his controversial language.

“What do our children think when he calls women pigs, or mocks a reporter with a disability, or when he talks about banning one and a half billion Muslims from entering our country?” Clinton said.

Would you want to work for that salary?

As the state finalized its revenue projections for the fiscal year that ended June 30th, public employees, including teachers, received bad news on the salary front - because of declining revenues, a planned pay bump would not take place This past week, a news report from the Harrisonburg area Daily News and Record highlighted several school systems declining applications for open teaching and administrative positions.  Coming close together, the two news stories bring up a long debated question in education policy - should teachers be paid more?  We thought we would spend this week delving into some of the data around teacher pay, nationally and in Virginia.  

One of the first questions is, how much does the average teacher get paid?  The map below provides a national breakdown by state - the map originally comes from the Washington Post based on NCES data.  



What is quickly apparent is that the national average for teacher pay of $56,383 may be of little comfort to teachers in South Dakota where the average teacher salary was only $39,580 in 2013. In short, the pay rate in high end states like New York and Massachusetts skew the average higher. Virginia had 20 states below it in 2013 and according to the Virginia Department of Education's latest teacher pay report, is now 29th in the country.

But nominal pay is only one measure - the cost of living is significantly lower in some states than others.  edSurge published this chart that adjusts for cost of living, putting Michigan and Pennsylvania teachers at the top of the compensation rankings.  Virginia comes out about the same - higher than 22 other states. 


But how does teacher pay compare to other similarly educated occupations?  One analysis back in 2008 reported to Education Week estimated that national teacher pay was only 88 cents on the dollar compared to 16 similar occupations.  Here Virginia ranked ahead of only eight other states with a rate of 82.8 cents on the dollar.  

An original analysis by the EPE Research Center finds that public school teachers nationwide make 88 cents for every dollar earned in 16 comparable occupations. Ten states reach or surpass the pay-parity line, meaning teachers earn at least as much as comparable workers.


Of course, just as the national average hides variation among states, state averages don't highlight the variations between school systems.  So we pulled the lastest teacher pay report from VDOE and constructed a series of visualizations that looked at starting salary for a teacher with a bachelors degree, the pay bump for a starting teacher if they come in with a masters degree, the average salary by school system and the change from FYE 2015 to this past year (based on budgeted numbers). (Click here or on the graphic below to explore the various visualizations in more detail.)   

Data drawn from 2015-16 VDOE Teacher Salary Report at http://www.doe.virginia.gov/teaching/workforce_data/salaries/2015-2016_salary_report.pdf

Some clear takeaways from this data include the following:
  • The I-95, I-64 and I-66 corridors show the highest starting salaries (though we should note here that a cost of living adjustment would alter the picture).  
  • In contrast, the percentage pay bump for having a masters degree shows no clear pattern - Northern Virginia localities provide bumps above 10% but the highest bump is reported by Charlotte County at 20.9%. Petersburg City is among the most compressed with a differential of just 2.9%.  
  • The change in the average salary from FYE 2014 to FYE 2015 also shows little in the way of consistent geographic patterns.  The sharpest decreases were seen in far western Virginia while Lynchburg City reported a rather startling 57.3% increase (perhaps some unique reporting situation explains the jump.)  It's worth noting with this fourth map that approved pay raises would be only one factor affecting average salary in a school system.  A large wave of retirements (teachers on top pay scale steps) combined with hiring new teachers as replacements could drive down the average wage even if the school board approved a modest across the board pay increase.  
Ultimately though, the question of how much teachers are paid is secondary to whether increases or decreases in pay affect the quality of teachers in the classroom (either by increasing the motivation of the same teachers from year to year or attracting higher quality teachers over time).  As with many efforts to answer such complex questions with empirical research, academic inquiry into this question is mixed - some authors like Hanushek and Rivkin argue that teacher pay has less effect on quality of teachers attracted than the working conditions and quality of students in the school where they teach; other authors like Figlio find an increase in pay does attract teachers trained by more demanding universities (though this variable is different than higher quality student outcomes).  One school system's 2010 effort to compile recent research on the relationship between pay and teacher performance may be of interest to some readers though we should note that referencing it is not meant as an endorsement of its conclusions.

Finally, it's worth noting that public perception of the relationship between teacher pay and educational quality may be different from academic findings and still of interest to elected policy makers.  To that end, in this week's Poll Snapshot we revisit results of our 2009-2010 Commonwealth Education Poll where we asked whether the public thought teacher pay cuts would hurt educational quality - the vast majority thought teacher pay cuts would hurt educational quality either a lot (63%) or a little (another 25%).   

With that, we wish you a great week and hope you find ways to stay cool in the midst of our current heat wave. 
 
Sincerely,
CEPI
CEPI Poll Snapshot - Impact of teacher pay cuts on quality of education
A short data insight from our 2009-10  Commonwealth Education Poll.

If funding cuts in education lead to teacher pay cuts, do people think that would hurt the quality of education?

Back at the height of the Great Recession, we asked a representative sample of Virginians whether they thought certain funding cuts would impact educational quality, including teacher pay cuts.  The responses clearly demonstrated that the large majority of the public thinks teacher pay cuts would hurt the quality of education a lot (63%) or a little (25%).  Only 8% thought teacher pay cuts would not hurt the quality of education in their community.  


While a majority of every demographic category thought teacher pay cuts would hurt educational quality a lot, there were some significant differences between different demographic groups.  A greater portion of women (68%) think teacher pay cuts would hurt quality a lot compared to men (58%).  At the same time, the portion who thought pay cuts wouldn't impact quality was virtually the same (8% for women and 9% for men.)  

Another significant demographic difference existed between geographic regions of the state.  As the chart above shows, the public in Tidewater is much more likely to say pay cuts would hurt educational quality a lot than were respondents in the Northwest region of the state.  The other three regions of the state were somewhere in between the two extremes.  (See the map below for the breakdown of regions.)  


(To read the full poll, visit our website.)